ABOUT CRASH AVENUE
Most PR folks still maintain a buckshot mentality with whom to pitch for editorial content, whom to pitch for exclusives, whom to pitch for premieres, etc. With most PR companies, (including ourselves earlier on in our devlopement) it appears as if everyone is haphazardly casting the widest net possible just to see what they can get. That’s ineffective for the artists, and it exasperates the writer who watches their inbox become a monster. When a writer does decide to feature an artist pitched by a publicist, you then bear witness to posts splattered across the Internet over a number of weeks, while the band’s social networks are not efficiently pointing current fans to an influential writer responsible for good editorial coverage. The band’s social network is not creating the best fan experience, nor are they using their fanbase to help generate new readers to worthy sites with writers who have taken the time to dig into their creation.
No matter how small or large an artist’s fan base is, a structured media roll out has a much greater effect when it’s efficiently managed from all sides – social media, online magazines, blogs, traditional print – across all the visible networks of the artist’s current fan base, as well as our own networks. Correctly implementing this sort of viral sharing, the artist gains a larger potential reach to other fans.
It’s my hope that we can do things differently at Crash Avenue Media & Management. I firmly believe that we can be the messenger that leads the flock of potential fans to the message of the artist we’re representing.
Jeffrey Smith founded Crash Avenue back in 2004. He spent his childhood less than a mile away from the original Kentucky Friend Chicken. A former musician, he’s retired from the performing artist arena and his unused B.M. degree in jazz studies is now about as useless as his blow dryer. After spending his early 20s as a bandmate in his own personal VH1 Behind The Music nightmare of music industry skullduggery, he emerged on the other side of the industry vowing to be an outsider forevermore. Luckily, the gravitational pull of the music industry took hold in 2002 when he began a small indie label in Louisville that served as a slingshot into what is now beloved as Crash Avenue.
Based in Nashville, Emilee Warner is a hyper-motivated, well-rounded music lover with experience in many areas of the business. She ran her own independent PR firm, and has punched the clock at indie record label Compass, television and radio outlets (WRLT, CMT, WMTS), and a booking agency (Keith Case & Associates). Primarily a bluegrass fan in her younger years, Emilee’s sensibilities have expanded from traditional music to the outliers of the genre. She’s scored spots on NPR’s Fresh Air, in Mojo, and the Wall Street Journal. She’s personable, passionate, and on the fast track to becoming the Queen of All Media (sorry Perez).
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Michael Powell has existed on all sides of the music business paradigm. Powell served as the assistant talent buyer at The Dame Music Hall in Lexington, the general manager at WRFL-FM, a writer for a variety of print and online publications, a blogger, and a guitarist/soundbender in music projects of, admittedly, varying levels of quality. He came on board Crash Avenue in Sept. 2009 after moving to Louisville from Chicago, where he worked as an SEO code monkey at a boring-as-all-hell Internet marketing firm. He’s very excited to be back in the low paying, highly rewarding music business, particularly since his poorly-timed journalism education has finally found a practical outlet in writing press releases that will sear your eyeballs.
Dustin Judah interned for Crash Avenue back in the day. Unfortunately, Dustin left us to intern at Polyvinyl, shortly thereafter finishing his degree at University of Illinois. He moved on to interning in the Premium Seat Sales division at Live Nation in Chicago, and soon had finished a music business masters degree at Berklee School of Music. Dustin has run the gauntlet of music industry internship hell. We rescued him like one of Sarah McLachlan’s ASPCA dogs and now he has the fortune of an acknowledged job in the music business.
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